Squeak of the Week

I just arrived back into the office from being a dean for a camp of eleven and twelve year olds in Falmouth, KY.

Camp Northward is a Christian camp located just on the outskirts of Falmouth in Grant County KY. next to the Licking river. It was opened in 1941 on the family farm of Raymond and Bell Odor.

The camp has dorms (not air-conditioned), a chapel and an air-conditioned dining hall/all-purpose building.

The weather was humid and sticky for the most part. Planning for a hot week we swapped class times for recreation events. Dodgeball in ninety five degree weather is rough on a thirty five year old.

Campers from many different backgrounds come there. Many of them come from troubled homes and have little to no positive role models. The week at Camp Northward provides them structure and compassionate staff who albeit for a brief time shows them attention and love.

The days are packed with learning, skits, trips, sports and more. At the end of each day we wrap everything up with a campfire devotion. We reflect on who we are and what kind of people we could and should be.

Some of the highlights…

I played a game with the campers called Knock-out. This is a fast and furious game of basketball where everyone lines up single file. You try to make a shot from the three point line before the person behind you makes it in. If the person behind you makes it in before you do then you are out of the game. Pretty simple.

On Thursday we travelled to Natural Bridge State Park and walked the 1.25 mile trail to the top. Getting old gets old really quick. Especially when you have eleven year olds running circles around you as you have your twelfth heart attack.

Everyone made it to the bridge itself and enjoyed the sites. It took a little less than two hours to reach the summit. From the bridge you could see for 8+ miles on the day that we went.

We played putt putt and grilled out that night after making our way back down the mountainside.

All in all, a great week. You hate to see some of the kids go back to the home lives they have. You hope that the things they’ve experienced in their time with you have planted memories that will last a lifetime.

Here’s some Friday fun to spice up the action on Squeak of the Week.

The Last Guy is a game that you can play on the pages of this blog. Click here to play (opens in new window).

Use your mouse to move your Rescuer around (he’s up in the Escape Zone in the left corner) to find civilians. Hold the left mouse button to run, and press the Z or X key (or scroll) to zoom in and out. Tap the space key to activate your thermal imaging device, which can be useful when attempting to locate clusters of civilians. Once you locate people, lead them back to the Escape Zone so the Mother Ship can pick ‘em up.

Watch out for baddies lurking around the blog and be careful around images and flash — they server as barriers to your progress.

Today we launched yet another website, this one for photographer Tony Arrasmith. Because of the large collection of high-resolution images, photography websites can quickly suck up loads of bandwidth and end up costing the photographer megapixels, er, megabucks in hosting. The Creative Department Interactive team came up with an elegant solution to this potential problem by making use of popular photo-sharing website Flickr and their public application programming interface (API). The result is worth a 1000 words.

Check it out at http://www.tonyarrasmith.com/.

DESIGN: Jennifer Schwab
CONTENT: John Graham
DEVELOPERS: Taylor MacDonald, Robb Heddrick

Creative Department founder and partner, Lauren Anderson, and her family were recently featured in Wyoming Living for their Spring Break trip to New Orleans and their work to help restore a hurricane-ravaged home. The article isn’t online, but you can view scans of the entire story and more photos on Flickr.

Our own Brandon Blank, ACD of Interactive, has just returned to the Queen City, fresh from his appearance at the World Beard and Mustache Championships in Anchorage, AK.

This current style, which he is calling “The Pablo,” is the culmination of months of work. It kinda reminds me of this episode of Family Guy.

When you get a moment, check out his profile on the WBMC website.